The design project reinterprets the Kṣīra Sāgara, a story of religious Hindu Cosmology and abstracts its embedded ontological process as a strategy of both formal design and functional solution in rejuvenating the ecological condition of the holy pilgrimage lake of Pushkar, India.

Through the conceptual abstraction of the Hindu cosmological story, the Ksiri Sagara, the project embodies an ontological design methodology as a process to define, solve and synthesise both its formal and functional requirements. Set at the sacred Hindu lake of Pushkar, India, the lake is a place of yearly pilgrimage for Hindus, and home to one of the world largest yearly camel fairs. The design outcome is an open-loop rejuvenating system of the lake, which due to the heavy environmental bearing of local activity, is under constant degradation. The design solution helps to regulate the lakes condition through a seasonal cyclic process of water storage, de-siltation, carbon filtration, biomass & camel pellet feed production, providing a local source of economic stability, clean privately sheltered bathing pools, public toilets, a tourism viewing tower and raising a wider scale awareness of the lakes condition and possible alternatives to local chemical farming techniques.

Design: James London Mills
Tutors at the Bartlett: Marcos Cruz, Marjan Colletti